Why We Couldn’t Stop Hate-Watching And Just Like That… — And Why Its End Feels Like a Punch to the Gut

When Michael Patrick King dropped the bomb that And Just Like That… was calling it quits after just three seasons, it hit like an unexpected knockout punch. I mean, there’s Carrie Bradshaw standing in her old Upper East Side apartment—now unrecognizable thanks to some new tenants—and you can almost see the horror on her face. Honestly, I couldn’t help but think, “What the hell happened here?” Because let’s be real, we’ve been scrambling to answer that question ever since AJLT first aired back in 2021. It’s earned itself a brash rep as TV’s top hate-watch, yet here we are, paradoxically bummed to say goodbye to a show we’ve roasted for years. Could it be that deep down, the nearly three-decade saga of Sex and the City still holds us captive? A show that was more than just sexy—it was a cultural whirlwind that captured the romantic chaos and cosmos-soaked nights of its time. So bite your lip and hold on—because this isn’t just about a series finale; it’s about wrestling with a complicated past and wondering if our old friends have really changed that much. LEARN MORE

The week after Michael Patrick King announced that And Just Like That… would be abruptly ending after its third season, Carrie Bradshaw found herself revisiting her old Upper East Side studio apartment in what had suddenly become the series’ penultimate episode. As she surveyed with barely restrained horror the changes her new tenants had made, it was written all over her face that she couldn’t help but wonder…what the hell had happened?

Viewers have been asking the same thing since AJLT first premiered in 2021. Three season later, it’s gained a reputation as TV’s preeminent hate watch. Yet its fans and its haters (often the same people) were struck with a new question after King’s announcement: Why are we so sad to say goodbye to a series that we’ve spent years collectively razzing on? The answer probably lies in the almost 30-year relationship we’ve had with its predecessor.

When it first aired in 1998, as its title promised, Sex and the City was first and foremost a snapshot of the sexual zeitgeist from the frontlines of the world’s most metropolitan dating scene. But while it was sexy in the literal sense, it was also sexy in the abstract—invigorating in the ways its characters talked and dressed and drank cosmos with dinner. The writers used the characters as vessels to cheekily debate changing romantic mores, but audiences were captivated just as much with them as with the show’s risqué preoccupations.

Yes, the women were all straight and lily white and upwardly mobile, and the clothes they wore and the hotspots they frequented only available through the kind of cash or social capital that most people didn’t have. Yes, it had its blind spots then and hot takes that don’t stand up to scrutiny today. Despite that—or perhaps because of it, since the show cultivated an air of exclusivity but invited viewers to sit down with the gals and join the conversation—the show captured a wide-reaching collective imagination. It was somehow both aspirational and relatable. Anyone could ask themselves and their friends: Are you a Carrie or a Samantha or a Charlotte or a Miranda? (And for a while, it felt like everyone did.) By the end of the series, viewers knew these characters so intimately that they could recast them with the women (and men) in their own lives.

As topical as the show was, its relevance has also been remarkably resilient. At 14, you could watch it on your friend’s satellite dish when their parents weren’t home and imagine yourselves moving to the big city and walking in Carrie’s Manolos. At 24, you could buy a DVD box set of the full series and, high on the newfound freedoms of adulthood, declare yourself a Samantha. At 34, you could binge watch the show online after a long day’s work in your well-worn “We Should All Be Mirandas” shirt. If you were a contemporary of the actors when the show debuted, you were able to grow and age with them; maybe now you have Gen-Z kids who have rediscovered the show as so many young people have—with a gleefully savage critical eye that makes you feel like a positively Pollyanna-ish Charlotte.

So when AJLT promised to check in on the ladies almost 18 years after the end of SATC and a decade after its second movie (the less of which is said, the better), it was to both great fanfare and trepidation. There was the drama surrounding Kim Cattrall’s decision not to reprise her role as Samantha, the speculation around Mr. Big’s on-screen death, and of Chris Noth’s alleged real-life misconduct. But the most pressing question looming over the show was how it, and its characters, would stack up to our expectations all these years later.

After all, for two decades, we’d been checking back in with the ladies on our own SATC rewatches. Our opinions of their escapades have evolved with time and with our own experiences and circumstances. We related to them deeply back then, and they’ve grown and changed in our imagination as we ourselves have grown and changed. AJLT felt like an invitation to a reunion brunch with old friends—with all its attendant anxieties. What if they’re different? What if we have less in common? What if we don’t recognize them at all?

Still, I’ll admit that after I first watched AJLT‘s two-part series premiere, I felt a rush of excitement. There was a lot to quibble with, yes. The explanation for Samantha’s absence rang false. And I’d rather listen to those Saatva Mattress podcast commercials on a loop than listen to Carrie’s actual podcast. There was lots to nitpick, but nitpicking was part of the fun of watching SATC too. What excited me was that we’d reunited with the ladies and they were indeed different—but I still recognized them. And with that, I imagined all the new frontiers of the zeitgeist they could conquer.

I imagined Carrie back in the dating pool at an entirely different stage of her life, looking for love or sex or both or neither in the shadow of grief. She was once again single, but nothing about it was fabulous this time. I imagined Miranda going back to school and learning that she’s no longer on the cutting edge of feminism, her queer awakening bringing her into new spaces that only reinforce that dissonance in starkly personal terms. I imagined Charlotte looking around at the life she’s always wanted for herself and discovering that she’s still left wanting. I even imagined Samantha, in her absence, as a conduit to exploring relationships of a different kind, of how difficult old friendships can be to maintain or new friendships to cultivate. I imagined that my friends had gone away and lived full, complicated lives and returned to once again debate the topics of a new era with the same old verve.

None of that happened, or at least not in any satisfying or sustained way. These threads seemed to be there from the start, but the series seemed to have no interest in pulling at them. I’m not the only one who was left disappointed. Over three seasons, AJLT has baffled many longtime SATC fans. Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda made choices that felt out of character. Some storylines fell flat or went nowhere or, in at least one instance, doubled back on itself. (R.I.P. Mr. Todd. And you too, Mr. Todd.) Characters both new (Che) and old (Aidan) so irked audiences that we practically ran them out of town. A cast of beautiful and talented of actors were introduced to play Seema, Lisa, and Nya, only to be sidelined to varying degrees.

And even as they were meant to bring more diversity—in skin tone, but also in relationship or family status, romantic and professional challenges, or just vibes—they ended up only reinforcing an uncomfortable truth about the ensemble: They are all very rich. Some, like Miranda and Nya, might be less so than Lisa, whose kitchen view of Central Park from 30,000 feet feels like a better fit for Succession, but they are all undeniably, almost flagrantly rich. Their lifestyles are no longer aspirational fantasies, but oppressive reminders of very real class disparity. In the same way Carrie seems to long for her more modest old apartment, we too long for her to return and pretend she never had enough money to putz around in a cavernous 1840s Greek Revival mansion in Manhattan.

Yet somehow, despite all this wealth, their outlandish silhouettes rarely darken the doorsteps of the kind of see-and-be-seen establishments the original series was known for catapulting onto every tourist’s bucket list. Instead, they all hang out at Anthony’s “Hot Fellas Bakery,” and that place is essentially a Le Pain Quotidien but with a lot more swinging salami. Where SATC perfected a magical mix of aspirational and relatable, AJLT‘s recipe is all out of whack.

Yet for all our critiques, the most common refrain about the show has become: “I hate this show…and I need 19 more seasons.” You could chalk it up to schadenfreude or morbid fascination. Or you could chalk it up to our familiarity with these characters—and, ultimately, our affection for them too. Dumping our conflicted feelings about AJLT into group chats and TikTok feeds feels like gossiping to our (real) friends about our other (fictional) friends. We may enjoy lovingly roasting them, but damned if we won’t pick up the phone if they call. In short, we still just want to hang out with them—and getting a little fodder for the group chat later is just a bonus.

Cast members have taken the reactions in stride, though they’ve sometimes wondered aloud to reporters, Who would better know these characters than the actors and writers who have breathed life into them for decades? And they have a point. You can’t argue that these characters have been in the hands of anyone but their lifelong stewards for the duration of AJLT.

Nor could you argue that the actors don’t deeply love their characters. They have made them as real as you could ever make a role written on a page. And they still play them with the same charm, the same excitement, and the same lived-in confidence as ever. (In some cases, the actors even leveled up. Say what you will about Charlotte’s shenanigans, but Kristin Davis is doing some of the best physical comedy in the game.) Sarah Jessica Parker, in particular, has never turned away from Carrie’s inherent messiness. Even in her farewell poem to the character, posted on her Instagram the same day King announced the end of the series, she wrote, “I know others have loved her just as I have. Been frustrated, condemned and rooted for her.”

And we were still rooting for her. Part of reuniting with old friends is accepting the ways they’ve changed, perhaps excusing the ways they’ve disappointed you, and forging a new relationship to match who you both are now. So why are we so sad to see AJLT end 16 seasons short of our facetious but also maybe-kinda-sorta-true pleas for more? I think I’m sad to see the show go before witnessing what it ultimately could have been. Maybe in one more season, AJLT would have become something closer to what we wanted. Or maybe one more season would have given us time to settle back into our friendship not with the ladies we watched and rewatched in SATC, but with the ladies as they are now. Or, you know, maybe not. We’ll never know. But I couldn’t help but wonder….